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I taught adult felons for eighteen years women and men who had murdered; raped, assaulted; pillaged; bought, sold, and used drugs; and committed unimaginable offenses against those they purported to love. No matter their crime, I met them as students and treated them as such. I believe even those who came seeking a mother's ear, or perhaps a priest's, found information that helped them think, wisdom that helped them learn, and antics that helped them remember.
I cut my correctional education teeth at Washington state's women's prison teaching traditional home economics, family dynamics, parenting skills, and related subjects meant to help women reconnect with their families. During the early years, I tailored standard college courses and educational materials to the population and devoted off hours to research and curriculum development. In time some of my work was published, and other correctional educators put it to use. After eleven years I transferred from the women's prison to McNeil Island Corrections Center, a medium custody men's facility, to introduce parenting and family courses and to coordinate an orientation program.
Much of this book is about my experiences with male offenders, but women's stories are here too, and tales of gender differences. Female teachers could hug a sobbing female inmate who'd gotten bad news from home and needed a steady shoulder, but sobbing males (and there were many) had to be kept at a distance. Rather than a shoulder, I offered a roll of toilet paper procured from janitorial supplies. Boxed tissues would have been nicer, but those carried inside from home disappeared within hours, box and all.
Prison is a unique society with absolute rules beyond those legislated by state or federal governments. Through the final decades of the twentieth century, barred cell blocks gave way to electronically controlled living units. The old convict code declined, and a new code slipped in, almost unnoticed, to take its place. It has to do with the unequivocal segregation of prisons and communities; it is symbolized by double rows of high chain link fences topped with rigid, spiraled razor wire. The wire, named concertina, is meant to shred flesh to ribbons. None enter or leave a prison's confines without permission. All are locked in during their stay. All who go inside, in any capacity, dance to the concertina's tune.
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